Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 90: Upper Management Dislikes Me and Undeserved Job Offers

Episode Date: January 5, 2018

This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions: Upper management has a negative impression of me because of an early manager. How do I manage and improve my reputation with mid and upper level management, who I interact with very rarely? I have a job offer I feel unqualified for. Should I decline this offer I honestly don’t deserve, or face a massive amount of impostor syndrome and risk not delivering?

It takes more than great big-o notation skills to be a great engineer. This is episode 90 of the Soft Skills Engineering Podcast. I'm your host, Dave Smith. I'm your host, Jameson Dance. Soft Skills Engineering is a weekly advice show for software developers who want advice. That was redundant, right? It's a tautology. Is it? I don't know.

That was a RAID 1 title. Or opening... I can't even talk. well let's move on okay uh we have a patreon if you would like to support us we would love your support you can go to patreon.com soft skills eng money you donate there goes towards equipment design editing and also the ball pit fund if you have benefited financially from listening or if you just want to support please consider donating there thanks jameson and thanks to those who have already signed up before it even came on the air yes all right would you like to read our first question? I would love to. This is from a listener named Tom. I've been in this

job for four years. When I first started, I was a sysadmin and I became a programmer. I also became a new parent. I had lots of domain knowledge, but I was not up to coding snuff like the other programmers with experience and CS degrees. At first I struggled, but I'm now doing well and I'm a team lead. The first year or so, I had a boss that had a poor opinion of me. This person had the ear of senior management and directors, which are in different offices. As a result, many of these higher ups still have a negative view of me how do i manage and improve my reputation with mid and upper level management who i interact with very rarely huh uh you became a new parent bring your child to work and hope they like children just kind of wander the halls

oh my kid spilled printer ink on your carpet what a stinker but look how cute she is so cute when he she is smearing a whiteboard marker that doesn't erase off of non-whiteboards all over your stuff yeah charm them with your kid ruining their office or you chase okay you don't interact with them that much you you let your kid loose send them in the direction of the offices that you don't go ever okay then you chase them down you have an opportunity to run into somebody oh hello yeah oh this is my child that is cute look at me also also i'm a pretty good engineer yeah i'm just thinking of like all the cliched romantic comedy things too yeah like you get a puppy and then i don't know just pretend like you're in a romantic comedy but instead of trying

to get a date you're trying to yeah i think it's called a meet cute isn't it i have no idea what that is yeah that's the name for this like cute happenstance thing that just so happens that leads to you running into somebody in a cute way and you need to create one of those with upper management a meet cute yeah and that's meet m-e-e-t right yes yes yes not m-e-a-t okay i think that's what that's when serial killers do it meet cute yeah hmm this sounds like a surefire plan yeah everyone loves kids that ruin stuff so adorable yeah since your child is now four or five years old they're probably in kindergarten so this may not be an option yeah that's true they're not cute anymore

they're just snot-nosed hey children can be snot-nosed at any age that's true i have all people should know that yeah what about creating like have you ever heard the term astroturfing yeah this is this is where you usually corporations do this where they they want to create a a grassroots movement to make their company look good but okay there is no one who wants to do that so you like pay people to act like they like you who have the ear of upper management oh i've okay i've never put together the astroturf grassroots connection yeah because you can't you can't there's no grass to grow roots so you you just slap down some fake turf fake turf that's right you bring in the fake turf since you can't grow the grass or since the grass

won't grow on its own yeah okay so how does this apply well so i think what you do is you find people close to the managers and you pay them off and you okay you say nice things to say nice things about you yeah so they i mean and then they'll do their own meet cutes that's all on their end yeah that's what okay yeah you got to go viral with management yeah make a video of yourself singing along to a popular song with an exquisitely in-depth choreography a little flash mob or something yeah yeah flash mob they just lift you up on their shoulders and show tom tom tom tom these all sound like great plans but if they fail

turns out upper management hates viral videos and children they click thumbs down on your youtube video my plan has backfired yeah so have you ever been in a situation where someone had a negative opinion of you and it you felt like it was impacting you in the company and your future no no i've never worked at a company large enough to have that many layers my i always like worked next to my boss this will soon change and i'm sure i'll be in this situation right away right yeah immediately but so far yeah upper management has either been my direct manager or like my manager's boss so there hasn't been a lot of a lot of layers i think um well okay one time i had a ceo who hated dressing up uh he goes to church every sunday and he he dresses like a slob

that church because he doesn't like it and i don't know he's just very for for a ceo he's a very informal dude and he would detest when he had to wear collared shirts to these sales calls and as a team we decided to instead of do a casual friday we worked at a startup so everyone wore like sweatpants and flip-flops so we decided to do formal friday where everyone would dress up very fancily and we did it once and it was fun and then we forgot the next friday and my boss was the only one that dressed up and and he hated it and he did it to be part of the team and he was he was mad that's probably the closest i've come to the situation that is really funny yeah he he was like how old was he then he was probably mid 40s and we were

all early to mid-20s so he was like the papa bear we all had a good father-like relationship with him so we just kind of made fun of him and it was okay so suffice it to say you've never been anywhere even remotely close yeah so so it was really rough is what i'm trying to say it can be i think it can be really nerve-wracking to know or even just wonder if people who are pretty far removed from you day to day and yet who hold your life in the balance to wonder what they think of you you know so yeah that causes existential dread in me knowing that other people have a poor opinion of me is my worst nightmare and and knowing also that they can somehow do something with that is double worse oh man seriously because i just worry like oh someone

didn't like this tweet i wrote and now they're gonna close twitter and be fine but if it's like and now they will ruin my job prospects. Right, right. Yeah. Super hard. I think you can reverse this, though, but the situation will take a really long time to reverse itself unless you go and directly talk to these people.

Let me just give you an example. Oh, there's a name for this. There's a name for the phenomenon where people, when they get something good and unexpected they quickly re-baseline but when something bad and unexpected happens to them they dwell on it a lot more you know this phenomenon i have not heard of that oh maybe someone will remember or maybe i'm making it up but in any case dave's phenomenon if someone has a negative opinion of you and you just go about living your life doing your job maybe even doing a great great job but word doesn't travel to them in an overt obvious way

they're just going to hold on to that opinion like there's no reason for them to change that opinion yeah unless you do something to move that needle and i think that the best thing you could do in a situation is to actually get some time with them one-on-one sit down and make it a feedback session where you can say, I want to improve as an engineer. I want your feedback. What have I done in the past that would, that I should stop doing? What should I start doing? What are the good things that I should continue doing? That's called a start, stop, continue. It should be familiar to some of these people and see what they say, you know, and, and then after you get the feedback, commit to them right there that you're going to improve in the areas that, you

know if you agree in the areas that they uh said you need to improve it so okay that you would schedule a meeting with them um you interact very rarely but i assume everyone says words about open door policies so you can put that to the test right my door is always open like okay here i am i've walked in your door yep tom says upper management what if they're not really in tune with what goes on day to day so basically all they have is hearsay from this boss that you used to work with i'm counting on it that's the thing like i'm banking that that's the case which is why i think you need to take the reins into your own hands and actually sit down with these people and you get to tell them how it is and show them what you are instead of just relying on

this like secondhand information being relayed through this unreliable source okay so maybe the bad reputation that just the the fact that you are trying to improve exactly would counteract the the vague but negative feedback that they remember about you because i doubt i doubt they remember anything specific besides like this person i liked sure didn't like this person so i don't exactly exactly that that's exactly what i think has happened here and maybe they have some details um on top of that but if they don't or whether they have details or not i think you still to sit down with them and hash out exactly what it is they've sensed about you and then give them the idea that you are improving so that in a year from now instead of just saying oh it's that guy

again tom yeah we don't i remember not liking they can think oh tom he's proactive he sat down with me he wants to get better let's see if he is getting better instead of yeah let's see if tom still sucks you know like it's a very different mindset it sounds like something they do for entertainment checking in the tom exhibit at the zoo yep still flinging poop everywhere as expected oh tom yeah uh one interesting side note is there's a lot of room to have people not like you and still have a job like if upper management doesn't like you you still have worked there for four years which means there's i don't know sometimes people get too worried about being fired i feel

like and and maybe if there were layoffs you would be targeted but i don't know it it can be harder to get fired than you think sometimes sometimes it can be a lot easier though too it just takes a few words if they're the right ones yeah not even from you necessarily yeah okay maybe that's useless words but i mean getting getting fired is a is a pretty low bar i mean working every day under the constant anxiety that you know the people who matter are thinking bad thoughts about you yeah it's a pretty crappy way to live yep and you do not have to live that way but i think you need to be proactive here and take it into your own hands don't let secondhand gossip shape your career you know sit down with these people and give them the right impression about you you be

you know give them firsthand knowledge and then you know commit to improving and you know nothing's it's crazy but nothing says improvement like someone saying i plan to improve now if you say it over and over and don't do anything about it then obviously that'll that'll be bad yeah it won't do much good for you but um i think it starts with you saying i'm gonna do better yeah i like that as a manager i would love that like even if someone had come into my office as a manager and said dave i want to do better give me some feedback and i want to i want to earn it i want to do a great job what do i know especially if they were like a problem employee in air quotes you know if i had a negative opinion of them yeah because because otherwise if if they're a problem

employee a lot of my life is is tied up in trying to work around that absolutely and you know honestly over the course of i was in i was officially in a management position for two years and i can't remember i mean i remember people saying you know i want feedback this or that but i it was very rare that people were very deliberate about improvement you know and and sitting down with me and saying let's make a plan i want to do better tell me what's the most important thing to improve i just people just don't do that and so when when you do that i think you're gonna of really inspire confidence yeah and it's good that you know because it would be worse to not know oh yeah oh yeah so at least you you have knowledge that you can use to do something

about the situation so there's a there's a there's a meta lesson here too that i'm taking away from this which is that if you find yourself in a position where you can say something negative about someone else to someone whose opinion can influence that person be very very careful about what you say because those opinions they get in there and they just last you know yeah yeah that's a good point so you could really be shooting someone in the foot who doesn't deserve it if you're not careful yep or who really really deserves it and you shoot their foot good and hard shoot their foot right off yep okay use your power wisely yeah use it wisely but i would definitely say err on the

side of not shooting anyone tom good luck all right let's know how it turns out or don't whatever shoot your own foot i don't care yeah i don't i don't care next question i'm over it All right. Do you want to read the next question? I will. This comes from a listener named John who writes, first-time poster, long-time listener. Welcome, John. I'm interviewing for and believe I will be offered a senior front-end developer position

at a startup. I have never developed a front-end in my life. Oh, boy. I've been a software developer for a year and a half. And with the past six months, I picked up HTML, CSS, and JS on my own and have done this and that with it, particularly with developer tools and one-off proofs of concept. But I love the message you guys have and my soft skills show strongly in interviews.

The co-founder sees passion and that's what he's looking for. Should I decline this offer that I honestly don't deserve or face a massive amount of imposter syndrome and risk not delivering? So first of all, this question came in several months ago. So it's probably resolved itself either way. Maybe John is still waiting for us.

Yeah, hang on. I just need to hear from my good, good friends who I know will not let me down. any week now they'll answer my question i just have one more week to answer your offer it's it's probably gone up a lot if you're waiting that whole time and they haven't said no yet there are some interesting things going on one is the senior front-end developer title having never developed a front-end professionally and having about a year and a half of experience as a developer yeah i don't think it's possible to be a senior front-end

developer after a year and a half with no professional experience doing front end but that doesn't make this wait wait wait what do you mean no experience he has dabbled in html no no professional experience oh my bad my bad you're right that means this is a wonderful gift that someone has given you that will potentially influence the course of your career positively if you take it it doesn't so yeah definitely not qualified that doesn't mean you have to not take the job. You can grow into this. How do you grow into a position that you're not qualified for? Well, one important thing is make sure that their expectations match your abilities. So I'm assuming you weren't dishonest in the interview. Assuming they know what you are, you just might

not feel like you're ready, but that's fine. You can still do the work and not feel like you're ready for it so here's what i think's going on i think there is a subtle insidious movement among startups where senior actually means junior and to actually mean senior there's got to be some new hidden title that no one is sharing something like master of front-end development or something okay that doesn't exist oh maybe not i don't know what you're saying or maybe it does maybe that all your co-workers are going to have master software developer on their titles and you're just going to have senior when i worked at startups i never knew anyone's title yeah me neither that's none of my co-workers we never really had titles that's the thing like startups like who cares what

your title is that it just makes no difference at all and i think maybe this engineer is reading too much into the title senior front-end developer i mean it's okay to be a front-end developer without a lot of experience what i think has really got john bothered here is the word senior yeah and i'm here to tell you that doesn't mean anything at a start yeah i would i would like it to mean something but it really doesn't at most places i would like it to mean something too at my company it definitely means something and uh there's very clearly documented roles and responsibilities for the different levels of engineer but at startup no yeah usually it means not on your first job i think that's like the baseline meaning of it yeah that that probably

sounds right you have worked somewhere else before this yeah so so you're saying the responsibility associated with this title is not anything outrageous yeah yeah and i think what will happen is you're only going to face imposter syndrome if you think there is some expectation bundled with the word senior that you're not able to deliver on but the fact is there's probably not yeah i mean they're gonna care about what you do no matter what your title is so that's a that's a good point nothing matters nihilism that's the approach uh yeah john at the end of the question says should i decline the offer or face the risk of not delivering um you'll face the risk of not delivering no matter what the title is that's so

i do like what you said about expectations if if your expectations are clear that can eliminate a lot of the fear when i get afraid i feel like that's usually because of an expectations mismatch and if i clarify things what do you expect me to get done when do you expect me to get it done and then maybe i have some information about like here's why it's hard there's usually a conversation that eliminates that fear yeah and i think as long as you're talking openly about how you're doing if you just if you just take the job take the title and then disappear for three months and then i don't know then you're doomed you will have not delivered well i'm saying like yeah go off and struggle for three months with

this thing that's new to you and feel like you're not performing like they want you to and you can't ask for help because that'll show your lack of experience and kind of torpedo your reputation so you just google more and the deadline gets closer and closer and you get no closer to accomplishing it yep that's kind of the failure case here i feel like absolutely is wanting to appear senior and thus not getting help when you're stuck yeah just don't do that i get stuck all the time and are you a senior software engineer jameson i'm a code laborer hey you you you just recently got a new job does you do you have senior in the title uh actually it does have senior in the title it's senior technical expert which is the

yeah there's a long story about oh yeah yeah okay yes but i'm not a senior engineer so you're just an expert just a lowly expert no pressure so here let me tell you another story about why startup titles are just completely irrelevant actually i can tell two the first one is about 10 years ago i hired an engineer from a startup and his resume said director of engineering and uh we're looking over his resume during the interview and i'm like oh you worked at thus and such kind of startup he's like yeah oh and by the way don't don't read into that director of engineering title i you know there was only two of us i was like okay anyway i was surprised that he put it on there yeah that's actually part

of why i'm often suspicious of titles at tiny tiny startups like that with two engineers is because the only way they benefit you is for like your next job yep so it feels weird and manipulative i guess it can sometimes benefit when you talk to other outside companies but usually you can see through right if you're talking to some tiny startup you're talking to this the cto you're like oh you're the programmer yeah exactly i see i was director of engineering at a startup i had more than two engineers that worked under me How many? There were like five or six and then a few QA people.

That was the whole engineering department? No, we were split in half. It was like running half the technical people. So you had a co-director? I think that it was just the CTO on the other side. Okay. So you were half CTO. Yeah.

What would an acronym be for that? The Assistant Chief CTO. Yeah. Assistant Chief CTO. acc to yes okay i like that so i told you i had two stories my other story is that at my last company where i actually was director of engineering um and it was a startup so that tells you so for engineers yeah there were a lot of engineers there yeah we had about i was responsible for 40 40 or 50 i think it was 40 engineers and qa people you know multiple managers

reporting to me anyway i felt like it was a little bit more of a director level position however my current company director could mean 500 people so there there you go if someone says they're a director of engineering it could mean two engineers or it could mean 500 engineers yeah and everything in between so but no the story was that one of my engineers came to me and said uh i've noticed that all my peers have the title senior software engineer and i want that title too and so we my cto and i were like oh okay well we just sent an email over to hr and said hey would you just go into the hr system and change his title to senior software engineer and they were like yep his next paycheck said senior software engineer and that was it so you know he passed

your rigorous requirements yes yes we put him through the ringer let me tell you yeah met all of the criteria in your grading rubric which was did you ask dave let's just say he was weighed in the balance and found awesome senior so you know senior it just it just has a lot less meaning than i think you might our listener here might be ascribing to it yeah so don't worry about it in this context now in other contexts i think the word senior can very significantly influence your day-to-day job function like in my current company senior basically means technical team leadership for up to 10 or 12 engineers and expected to collaborate in large system design and

architecture across you know a half dozen teams so um it has it carries with it a lot more weight than it did at any startup i've been at sure but usually with the explicit responsibilities come more explicit criteria for earning that title yes so the fact that they're just like senior means that's about the level of expectation they have about what a senior does there yeah good I don't know, do good programming work. Oh, you dabbled in HTML? Sweet. Yeah.

The other person we were considering hasn't even dabbled. So he was going to be a non-senior front-end software engineer. A mid-level. Right. Yeah, that's a good point. I think you should, instead of reading so much into the title, read into exactly what it is they expect you to do. Because the titles mean, they basically have no standard meaning in the industry.

Yeah. It is definitely possible to be an actual imposter. and the way you become an actual imposter is you are dishonest about your experience, your capabilities. So don't do that. For sure, don't do that. That's slimy and gross and bad.

Feeling like you're an imposter is usually just normal to everyone but Dave. So that part's fine. If you feel like an imposter, don't you think the chances that you're actually an imposter are pretty low? I don't know. I don't know what those people think.

Are they just like Dunning-Kruger to the max where they think they're amazing and they genuinely don't know yeah who who are actively misleading people or do they feel bad about it on the inside those people are pretty rare in my experience i've known a couple of people who i've maybe maybe just one actually i don't think i've ever worked with anybody like that i just read about them on the internet yeah exactly so they must be there yeah well i think we're agreed though you should do it seven months ago be honest and and don't be afraid to get help but do it and you'll grow into the title frankly if i had said no to jobs that i felt like i wasn't qualified for i would still be at my first job

out of college actually i wouldn't even be at that job you'd still be in college yeah i'm not qualified to graduate exactly i mean of course you're not qualified to go start work for a new company like you don't know anything about the company or anything yeah i think my first full-time job i felt pretty unqualified for i feel like before that all my part-time jobs i also felt unqualified but that i don't know that was more normal there was there has been one job in my life where my experience like the tools and technologies that i've been using for the last several years lined up like exactly with the job description and that was a job that i took and every other job that i've accepted i did not have sufficient experience to uh meet the criteria you know i did

not have the right tools technologies languages in my experience that were on listed on the job description i did not have the exact number of years listed on the job description you know and if i had said no to those jobs because i didn't feel qualified then you know i would have not had a lot of jobs yeah yeah be honest and let other people disqualify you don't disqualify yourself love it some pithy vague advice i like it no i like the idea to say look if you're going to be disqualified let them do the disqualifying they're the ones writing the check after all yeah like it's really not up to you whether you deserve the job yeah they're writing the check they decide whether you deserve the job all right have we answered the question i think so good luck

john okay good luck john from the past hopefully current senior front-end developer john super senior oh man imagine if he said no oh no this is gonna oh it's gonna be a hard listen for john if he said no his life is ruined now if only you had answered my question is it worse that we answered this question now or should we have left it unanswered i think it might be worse if you would like your life ruined in this way please go to softskills.audio we have a form on there or there's a button that takes you to a form actually the button is labeled click here to ruin your life yeah i think it's just ask a question send in your questions we love getting them we we really enjoy reading them and we will get to all of them at some point

we swear yes if the universe continues for long enough we will answer them all yep all right thanks